Posted on 11/11/2007 8:43:34 AM PST by Clive
The death of a soldier under a young officer's command during the Korean War is a bitter reminder of the harshness of war
By PETER WORTHINGTON, TORONTO SUN
Remembrance Day is for veterans and the nation to honour those who died in past wars: The Boer War, WWI and II, Korea, 40 years of "peacekeeping" and now Afghanistan -- 100,000-plus killed in Canada's name.
I've written a lot of Remembrance Day pieces over the past 50 years, but this is the first time I've made it personal, concerning not the first soldier killed under my command as a platoon commander in Korea, but the first (only) one whose death I felt (and feel) personally responsible for.
Like Afghanistan today, Korea was a different sort of war for Canadians. It started out with WWII mobility, pushing the North Koreans and Chinese back across the 38th parallel, and evolved into WWI trench warfare -- purely defensive, with our troops entrenched on mountain ridges, living in deep bunkers, sleeping by day, patrolling no-man's-land by night, and being mortared and shelled day and night, ever alert for Chinese attacks.
Every young officer (I was a lieutenant) in command of men, feels responsibility for them and is fearful of an error that will cause casualties. And when casualties inevitably occur, there's an instant sense of regret -- and then relief that there weren't more.
Life, and the war, go on.
Casualties and deaths in Korea were unlike those in Afghanistan today. In 1951-53, when a soldier was killed there were no ceremonies as in Afghanistan, no parades, no saluting the dead, no coffins loaded into aircraft to be flown home to grieving relatives and towns that mourn.
In those days, Canada tended to ignore its Korean fallen, just as they ignored the war. Maybe WWII was too close in time, and the country too exhausted to fret about another war across another ocean.
As if to prove this contention, the Vancouver Sun ran the same story about the Korean war on the same page every day for a week. The newspaper got not one letter of complaint. No one much cared.
In Korea, the dead were somewhat unceremoniously buried, or later removed to the UN cemetery at Pusan.
Body parts (in the case of mortar or shelling deaths) were wrapped in canvas, bound with telephone wire and buried with the soldier's identity with him, for later re-interring.
This was the fate of Russ Haraldson, whose death I felt responsibility for and, ever since, have felt badly about.
The 3rd Battalion of the Princess Pats arrived in Korea in 1952, with an early advance party attached to the Royal Canadian Regiment (RCR) to learn the ropes.
One of those soldiers was Russ Haraldson. The RCR had endured a nasty fight on Hill 355 (known to the Americans as Little Gibraltar) which the Chinese were anxious (but failed) to capture.
I commanded 12 Platoon of Dog Company and our position was on a feature known as the Hook, which had been previously been overrun when the Americans, and more recently the Black Watch occupied it.
Three PPCLI's first brush with the enemy was a counter-attack role when the Chinese, briefly, overran the Black Watch. Charlie Company did most of the fighting, with Dog company supporting. My memory is of my platoon forming up at the base of the Hook hill on a bitterly cold winter night, with my sergeant (Russ Morrison, more capable than I) reassuring the men (boys really), and dry-mouthed soldiers wanting water from the platoon canteen.
As it turned out, we had mistakenly brought the rum canteen -- in those winter nights, each soldier was allowed two ounces of over-proof navy rum on midnight watches. My method was to allow each soldier one swallow, so the light drinkers and abstainers could look as if they were drinking more than they were. As a consequence, we always had rum available for dicey moments to reward or reassure soldiers.
On this occasion my platoon became positively boisterous which I, the company commander and sergeant major mistook as a fighting spirit. Fortunately, Charlie Company did the heavy work of routing the Chinese.
My platoon position on the Hook was precarious. It looked down on a saddle that led to a knoll called Warsaw, from which Chinese periodically attacked.
Another nearby and dangerous knoll was Ronson. In the hills across the Imjin valley was the main Chinese position -- Pheasant, from which we were constantly shelled.
The three 10-man sections of my platoon were all exposed to the enemy -- but one section was more exposed than the other two. We called this the "Windy Side," primarily because it was closest to the enemy.
This trench area stunk of death. Chinese corpses from the last attack lay out front, or were thinly buried and rotting in the breastworks of the trench.
At times, one retched at the smell, until eventually one got used to it. We only realized how pungent it was when senior officers or Bill Boss (the Canadian Press correspondent) occasionally visited, and gagged.
The Windy Side was unnerving. If one moved during daylight, mortar or artillery fire landed. At night, loudspeakers from Pheasant wondered why we Canadians were fighting the "American Imperialists' war," and how did we feel about our wives or girlfriends back home dumping us? That sort of stuff, including the promise of "white bread every day" if we surrendered.
The Windy Side was so precarious, that I revolved the sections every week or 10 days. The two other section sites were marginally safer, with platoon headquarters, in the centre of the triangle, 10 metres back -- comparative R&R.
On the first rotation of sections, I was uneasy about the new guys slated to take the Windy side. They weren't fully seasoned and I asked Haraldson, the present section leader, if he'd consider staying on the Windy side and help steady the incoming section.
Haraldson had served with 1st battalion, and as I recall was a solid Saskatchewan boy and was unflappable. A good soldier. He shrugged. Windy Side or no Windy Side, the whole bloody platoon position was a nightmare and made no difference to him. I was relieved -- as was the incoming section. I promoted him to lance-corporal.
A couple of nights later, during routine mortar shelling, with all our guys in weapon sites and alert, I got a call that someone had been hit. I left the command post, hurried down the Windy trench, and found the soldier was Haraldson -- he'd been doing rounds and checking the troops.
It was hard in the dark to tell where he was hit.
Arms, legs, chest seemed okay, but blood was everywhere. It turned out a mortar had landed and a shard of shrapnel had hit him in the neck, slicing the carotid artery. We tried to staunch the blood flow.
Useless. He was in no pain, but every heartbeat pumped a geyser of blood. He was dead within minutes.
When a soldier is killed in an ongoing war, emotionally you quickly move on. The rum was passed around, and we went through Haraldson's belongings -- personal (but not embarrassing) stuff to be sent home, things like socks, boots, winter equipment, distributed among comrades.
I wrote his family, praising his commitment to duty by taking over as section leader when he didn't have to. Ever since I've felt wistful that if I hadn't asked him to do this, he'd still be alive.
Saskatchewan's government named a lake in the northeast corner of the province in his memory.
On the 50th anniversary of the Korean war I visited Haraldson's grave in Pusan's UN cemetery. Until then I hadn't realized how young he was -- at 22, three years younger than me at the time.
His death occurred on Dec. 16, 1952 -- five weeks after Nov. 11's Remembrance Day, which I don't recall anyone in the trenches of Korea marking as anything special.
Russell Haraldson's was just one death in a nasty war, but the "what ifs" have gnawed at me ever since -- and have happened over 70 times in Afghanistan, to other Russ Haraldsons.
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Bump.
Russell Heraldson was in the wrong place at the wront time. It’s a sad thing what happened to him. He died providing freedom to other human beings. That’s an honorable death, but then that’s a rather hollow thing for me to say, since it was his life surrendered and not mine.
About all I can say is that I value the loss of men like this. I respect their service and admire them for their sacrifice. Men who put themselves in harms way during military service humble me. Men who lose their lives leave me somewhat speechless.
How can you honor them enough by mere words? Well, you can’t. You feel compelled to try, but in the end you can't.
Thank you Russell Haroldsons of the world. I cannot help but think that in the end, your rewards will be sweet.
The US didn't read all the names of those who fell in Korea on the nightly news, either.
Maybe that is because nearly 8,000 US servicemen died in the first 3 months of the Korean Conflict.
Speaking of regrets, I'll bet Truman regretted pulling the US troops out of Korea in 1949.
Truman decided to send Americans back to Korea in 1950 to re-win S. Korea's freedom from the invading North Koreans.
30,000 US troops died in Korea in 30 months, while Truman was president.
Truman should have fought to keep our troops in Korea in 1949, like GW Bush is fighting to keep our troops in Iraq.
Remembering.............
I tell you, I feel where this guy’s coming from. Not quite the same way, but it’s real enough.
My entire deployment in Iraq, my Platoon consistently, somehow, was not engaged by the enemy. In Mosul, especially, my Platoon would move through a particular area, have no contact whatsoever, then, 5 minutes later, another Platoon would go through and be hit by a sizeable IED. Dozens of times this happened. Not to say we were never hit, just almost never.
Anyway, one morning, we’re moving at breakneck speed down a main drag in Mosul because an engineer platoon is taking small arms fire from an unknown position. As we turn on to the main road, we pass by our 2nd PLT who was just breaking down from an all-night observation position. We exchanged greetings over the company net as we drove by. We got to the engineers a minute or two after the gunfire had settled down. As I’m calling up a report to my battalion, I hear two explosions separated by about 10-15 seconds. Turns out, 2nd PLT had been hit as they were pulling away from their overnight position. The Platoon Sergeant had a piece of shrapnel from the first IED punch right through his ballistic eyewear. Somehow, he wasn’t killed instantly, and the Weapons Squad Leader managed to keep him alive long enough for him to be hooked into some machines on the FOB’s hospital. He died later that day.
It had me wondering (and still does), why did that IED not go off on me or my PLT? If it had, it would’ve scratched my Stryker’s armor, maybe flattened a tire or two, but that’s about it. For some reason, we avoided a booby trap we didn’t know was there, and one of our’s was dead. I guess all you can say is, “That’s war.” But that doesn’t really make me feel any better about it.
I’m glad Peter Worthington still writes and is published.
Not in your instance, but in others I would urge folks to treat this the same way they would the loss of an old lover. You will never forget it, but let the passage of time release you from the pain that nothing else will.
I do know this, if you had been killed, you would not have wished anyone who survived to give the incident any more thought than to be sorry that you met with tragedy. You would not want them to linger on the topic to the point that it would prevent them from living the full life that you couldn’t. That is what we have to accept about them.
Every day you live, you should live that day better knowing you are living both your life and the life of the person who was lost. Make every day a winner. Make them as proud of the life you lived as you possibly can. That is your duty to them. It the duty of each of us to live our lives, proving the value of what the men who have been lost in war fought to preserve.
When I see our political leaders doing things that undermine our nation's safety and sovereignty, you damned well better believe who drives it. Every man that fell drives it. Even my own children are secondary in that thought, for they haven’t paid the price. They are merely the beneficiaries, as is this grateful citizen.
Not-quite-random chance. If you look long and hard enough, you may discover some obscure reason, in your scheduling or the way you guys moved out, why the bad guys never got a big chunk of you. But you could go nuts trying to figure it out.
Someone said the other day, speaking of chance as exempified by the classic coin toss, that it would be very hard to cough up 25 heads in a row. But if you (with hopefully a lot of help from other people) did about 10 million coin tosses, it would be not unexpected, and indeed it would be expected, that you would encounter a few runs of 25 heads in a row .... and several more runs of maybe 24, or 23, in a row.
Pull another tour in Iraq with another platoon, or maybe the same platoon, on the same or another schedule, and you may have a very rough time of it -- or you may experience the same good luck all over again, like the crew of the Memphis Belle.
Just don't go crazy. You can control that part.
Interesting question.
Does it matter?
Worthington selected a soldier of proven experience and demonstrated steadiness under fire, promoted him to lance corporal and put him where he was needed.
The death of the soldier followed from this decision, but it was merely causa sine qua non, not causa causans.
Tt is appropriate to consider what might have happened, and to how many, had Worthigton left a less steady or less experienced soldier in charge of that sector.
But this sort of outcome hits the officer in the guts and stays with him for a very long time.
I’m sure that it does. He wouldn’t be worth his salt if it didn’t. Still, I do want to urge folks to remember it but not embrace it. I care about our troops who come home and I want them to have successful futures.
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